


Learning to Breathe

by girgentanaCombatant (orphan_account)



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Alternate Universe - Succubi & Incubi, M/M, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-09
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 18:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1437535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/girgentanaCombatant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Ikari Shinji is a cambion, and an entirely awful one at that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning to Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Eva fic ever and therefore if I screw up characterisation, feel free to punch me repeatedly in the face. I'm seen the anime and the films and read both the manga and about half of Campus Apocalypse (thus far) but characterisations change from story to story and I've never written anyone before and it's a shitty AU so forgive me.
> 
> Prompt by the amazing tumblr user kawosinner; Kaworu gender identity headcanon lifted wholesale from the equally amazing tumblr user aceworu. It's basically become my headcanon therefore.
> 
> A cambion is the offspring of an incubus and a human woman; according to Wikipedia, the cambion "retained the absence of breath or a pulse until seven years of age, but was said to also have been incredibly heavy (even too heavy for a horse to carry) and to have cried upon being touched". I basically mix-and-matched cambion descriptions and myths into what you see before you. Confused? Leave a comment and I'll clarify it better in the fic better, whoops.
> 
> Basically, Shinji and Asuka are cambion, and Shit is About to Go Down. I really wish that I'd had the chance to flesh it out with other characters added to the mix, but, eh, I had like only a few hours to write it anyway, so whatever floats the boat.
> 
> Unedited/unbeta'd/etc. Kaworu's pronouns switch halfway through, which made writing this a pain in the butt, so I ever accidentally misgender faer past the switch point let me know and I will correct it immediately.

The day Ikari Shinji turns eighteen years old the purple hourglass by his bedside table turns on its head. Violet sand trickles downwards (at a slower pace than his father’s, which requires sacrifices twice daily) so rapidly that Shinji panics and strips and bursts out the door prior to realising that the sun remains high in the sky and he ought to wait for the cover of night before waltzing around in his cambion clothing (i.e. none whatsoever).

He’s old enough to know (without understanding) how his mother died and also old enough to know (without understanding) that his father flits from prey to prey the instant the former expires their last.

He thinks that maybe his father loved his mother, at least, but he knows ( _for certain_ ) that his father has not loved a soul since.

Except for the uptick of his father’s amber sand.

 

On the first day Shinji gets distracted in the kitchen by the sheer _state_ of disarray of the half-eaten boxes of frozen meals and finely spread ramen dust that liberally coats the counters. By the time he finds his way to the bedroom where his mark has apparently fallen entirely off of the bed to snuffle under a blanket on the floor. He looks down (at his feet). A feathering of silvery hair from beyond the ruffled hem. Through the window a thin whisper of pale light glows on the hollow of his mark’s throat like a divine execution slicing across his neck and suddenly whatever bravery Shinji might have had transmutes to a thick smear of terror— _what if his mark is dead_ —and the next thing he knows he’s dropped to his knees with his hands on the boy’s shouldersstomachbody and out of nowhere fingers coil around his wrists with sufficient surprise to squeeze the breath from his lungs—

“Mm, sorry, are you all right?” The blanket pools in the space between them, between the mark sitting halfway up in his pyjamas and Shinji kneeling on his floor.

He tries to inhale: His throat squeaks. Kaworu pulses his curled hands over his wrists, once, and then lets go to envelope his arms in cold. Shinji manages an exhalation (someone really ought to give him an award for that) until his lungs press tight against his ribs. “Would you like something to eat? You look disoriented.” Heartbeat: one, two, three. “Ah, how many fingers am I holding up?”

Shinji focuses over the bridge of his nose. HIs gaze slips from the outstretched hand (two fingers in a little victory particularly pertinent to a cambion incapable of even damn lying down on a sleeping human) to the mark himself. Red eyes and a mouth halfmooned in laugh lines and a seeming composition more of stardust than of earthly life.

“You’re crying,” the mark says in a voice spun of the abyss. Shinji registers wetness on his face and his nails burn into his palms. “Here.”

Not ten minutes later Shinji is perched on the edge of a chair in the mark’s kitchen with a blanket swaddled over his otherwise naked body and a cup of hot chocolate steaming between his palms. Ripping open a box of crackers already torn at the other end, his mark sits down not across from him but next to him and the proximity of their flesh threatens to drive a spear between his ribs.

Shinji puts a cracker in his mouth and the moist staleness of it divorces the surrealism from the situation: He actually broke into a human’s house, made it to the human’s room, and then _woke the human up_ without having intercourse with the damned thing.

Well, technically, _Shinji_ is the damned thing. But he’s never been one for semantics.  If _semantics_ is the first word.

“I hope you’re feeling better now!” The mark beams at him (Shinji wants to ask _how_ but his mind and tongue have disconnected somewhere along the line and his tongue has possibly taken a vacation to somewhere else in his body anyway). “Ah, and why wouldn’t you tell me your name?”

His mouth opens and closes. Before he can really listen to the words forming on his lips his name tumbles out of his throat, unbidden: “Ikari. Ikari Shinji.”

“Ikari Shinji! A beautiful name.” _Th_ rob. “I’m Nagisa Kaworu.” Nagisa takes a sip of his hot chocolate. When he runs his tongue over his upper lip (to lick off the remains of chocolatey wonder) Shinji catches the strand of saliva glinting and his groin throbs powerfully—almost _painfully_ —in a not-so-subtle reminder of what he is why he came. “It’s nice to meet you, Ikari-kun. Is the chocolate okay?”

It tastes like a dusty cup that hasn’t been washed in years and an overstored store-bought powder that’s less like chocolate and more like hell incarnated. Shinji drinks it down for want of something to do. “Mm.”

“I’m glad, Ikari-kun. Do you go to the university here?”

“H-high school. Today is—” The analog clock on the table reads just past midnight. “—was my eighteenth birthday.”

Nagisa’s entire face alights as though a nebula had painted his smile in starlight. “Happy birthday! I’m sorry I don’t have any presents for you, Ikari-kun. But I hope my company will be enough!”

If blushes could kill then Shinji would possibly be two metres under. And might still end up there for his inability to breathe quite right. “You don’t have to keep saying my name.”

He tilts his head to one side, the glimmer in his eyes (redder than a vibrant sunset, with pupils far wider and darker than they have any right to be) caught halfway between _inquisitive_ and _mischievous_. “But your name is beautiful.”

For a moment Shinji wonders if he has miscalculated and miscalculated _terribly_ at that, if his first mark is secretly some sort of New Age madman with a deep belief in the unity of the human soul or what have you, because who else would treat an intruder-slash-cambion so amiably, hot chocolate and birthday wishes and _kindess_ and all?

“Also,” he starts before his mind can realise what he’s about to say and strangle him, “I came here to h-have sex with you.” He adds, as an afterthought: “Nagisa-kun.”

“Oh.” Nagisa blinks and the catlike sweep of his eyelashes could bring a nation to its knees. “I suppose I’ve considered it in the past, and to have such an opportunity drop into my lap—” He splays his fingers on the table; the nail of his pinky brushes against the side of Shinji’s hand and the tears prickle at his eyes again. “Ah, fate is surely guiding me.”

Shinji feels his face blanch. “W-wait, are you saying that—?”

Nagisa blinks again and Shinji has to restrain himself from asking him to _stop being that pretty immediately_. “You seem uncomfortable. Never mind what I was saying.”

“Oh.” Shinji suddenly discovers that the pattern of splinters in the tabletop are _extremely_ fascinating. Nagisa pours him another cup of hot chocolate. Shinji can’t recall how to say thank you.

 

When morning arrives Shinji leaves Nagisa asleep on the table. By the time he arrives back home his father takes half an interest in his activities (for the first time in possibly a few years) and Shinji assures him that yes, yes, the human was satisfied, yes, yes, he really did Do The Thing, yes, yes, absolutely.

Asuka sees through his disguise in negative two seconds and laughs at him because she made not one but _two_ connections on her first night out and splitting the burden means that the victims will last longer.

(Shinji doesn’t think about that last bit.)

 

He’s back again the subsequent night and this time Nagisa is waiting demurely in the kitchen with two bowls of instant noodles not even cooked. “I-I could make you some food, if you want.” The offer seems to come not quite from any rational iota of thinking but from a simple curiosity to understand a boy who could so easily accept a cambion walking into his life.

“Ikari-kun is very kind,” Nagisa answers with an almost startlingly gracious gratitude, propping up his chin on the back of his hands (ghosting for a moment the image of his father and prompting Shinji to turn hastily towards the kitchen counter). Shinji scours through the pantries in search of anything that isn’t dry noodles or stale crackers or hot pockets that honestly should be in the freezer rather than in the  middle of the damn _pantry_ , to no avail. Still he finds an egg (fresh: he checks twice) and a handful of other ingredients to temper the plastic edge from the ramen.

This time Shinji arrives _wearing_ clothing. Shirt tucked into pants and belt clipped neatly and hair brushed save for that stupid feathering at his bangs that refuses to stay down.

Nagisa’s hair licks upwards at the tips as though pleading for the teasing ministrations of Shinji’s fingers but he manages to keep his hands to himself while Nagisa hums out songs Shinji doesn’t know and sings Shinji’s favourite melody without his breathing a word.

The noodles wisp grey from the heated surface. Nagisa angles the bowl up. Drinks deeply. Rests his gaze with a heaviness like a deity’s judgment on Shinji’s shoulders. “It’s more delicious than I thought food could be! You’re amazing, Ikari-kun.”

Shinji’s cheeks manage to flush harder than previously (another award he deserves, one of the few in his life). “Th-thank you.

Nagisa goes on: “You cooked for me.”

“Mm?” When he doesn’t reply Shinji dredges up the courage to abuse the most deadly feature known to daemonkind. “Nagisa-kun?”

His expression perfectly emulates a feline upon having its belly scratched. “‘Kaworu’ is fine.”

No, Shinji doesn’t deserve an _award_ for blushing, but an international gran prix. “Ah-h. You can call me ‘Shinji’, too, then.”

“Shinji-kun,” says Kaworu like the name were a hymn and his voice were a piano’s strings, and really that settles the deal with such abruptness that Shinji can feel the finality shudder down the marrow of his bones.

In the  midst of the bells singing in his head and rattling his cranium a single thought murmurs through his mind: _He’s fucked, and not even in the good way._

 

He has far more sand in his hourglass than he initially thought, never mind his nightmares of eyes and teeth and rotted flesh. The observation comforts him and his father is too apathetic to actually check on the status of his son’s life force.

For once the neglect proves useful in its own manner.

 

By Shinji’s request they walk to the convenience store down the street (Shinji will cook the boy some proper food if it kills him, if only because the shitty dry ramen are already threatening to do so). As the cashier rings up the myriad of purchases and Shinji prepares to execute his wallet, the cashier—a girl of perhaps sixteen or seventeen with two buns that flow into loose braids down her back—giggles at Kaworu’s apparent fascination with lip balm, given how he smacks his lips and flicks his tongue over the top of the tube and blinks at the minty taste.

“Is he your boyfriend?” the girl asks; Shinji forces his jaw to unclench and his tongue to uncongeal from its hagfish slipperiness at the bottom of his mouth. “Did you want paper or plastic?”

“I’m sorry.” Kaworu takes paper (Shinji has noticed by now the constant need for Kaworu to _feel_ , to crinkle texture under the soft pads of his fingertips). “But I’m not his boyfriend, no.” Shinji lurches forward, inwards breath so sudden that his throat aches and the curve of his spines pounds against the base of his skull. “Thank you kindly.”

The weight of the groceries-plus-lip-balm in his arms is absolutely nothingness compared to the weight upon his chest. Not that he reckoned they were dating, of course: They’ve known one another for less than a week and he’s akin to a festering pile of human-shaped-cambion-flavoured garbage and _Kaworu_ is akin to that pleasant parsimony of a dream he has just before he fully awakens, the kind he could try to hold on to but it’s smoke between his fingers and by the time he’s making coffee for himself the dream has faded to a half-remembered sensation in the dull sloshing of his veins and by the time he’s washing crumbs from his plate the dream has vanished entirely into the mist.

Shinji makes dinner (fried fish: his secret recipe) while Kaworu sits—no, more like perches, birdlike—on the counter and sings a tune that Shinji recognises ( _Fly Me to the Moon_ ) and pretends that nothing has happened whatsoever. When the silence stretches so long that Shinji can almost _hear_ the sluggish passage of seconds he shatters it over his knee: “S-so. Kaworu-kun. We’re—” Really, if he weren’t a demimortal half-incubus with a tenacious life force his inability to breathe would likely have killed him years ago. “—not boyfriends?”

Kaworu closes one eye, just one, and reaches out to brush Shinji’s cheek with the second knuckle of his index finger. “Do I not have to a boy to be Shinji-kun’s boyfriend?”

That deflection in third person. Gripping the handle of the saucepan tightly Shinji doesn’t quite notice the burning heat until pain shoots through his palm. He stumbles backwards. Fingers coiling around his wrist, jerking him up, tears in his eyes and down his cheeks in streaks of salt and agony.

“Are you okay?” Kaworu clinks ice into a paper towel. With a whisper of gratitude Shinji presses the wrapped ice to his palm. “Shinji-kun?”

“I think so.” The pain ebbs slowly; Kaworu finishes dinner (chars the fish slightly) and they eat sitting perhaps a centimetre or two apart. Shinji watches him, fingers slender and nimble and deft, eating mannerisms similar to those of perhaps a four-year-old. Not _messy_. But with a raw enjoyment that evokes a child’s, or perhaps someone who never exactly lost his innocence in the journey to adulthood.

No. Not innocence. _Wonder_ , he thinks, is perhaps the word. When he rolls it around his mouth it _feels_ right, at least.

Shinji has the distinct impression that Kaworu has simply either never given thought to or never entirely cared about social convention. And then Kaworu’s words finish processing:

“You’re not a boy?” His brows snap together and a thread of worry slithers into his innards to claw and bite: He hasn’t even considered the possibility of Kaworu being trans, of him— _her?_ —being a girl. Not that he would mind, but for him not to have allowed the thought to pass his mind almost bids him to smash his head against the wall and put the world out of his misery. “A . . . a girl, then?” He throws his arms up defensively. “I w-wouldn’t mind, Kaworu-kun! I just want to know, so I never upset you like that again!”

Kaworu laughs and Shinji listens to the angels sing. “No, Shinji-kun. I’m neither one. What they call, mm, a _nonbinary_ , I think.” He—they—taps their chin thoughtfully. “And if you don’t mind, I like _fae_ , as a pronoun.”

“Fae,” Shinji echoes, confusion mounting by the minute.

“As in, _fae’s my enbyfriend_. Because I am.”

To his eternal shame Shinji’s first thought consists mainly of _people like that exist?_ and he doesn’t realise he’s said anything out loud until he notices how Kaworu’s eyebrows have sloped downwards and the corners of Kaworu’s mouth have flattened from a halfmoon smile to a flat line, the closest to _disturbed_ or _angry_ or _disappointed_ that Shinji has ever seen.

Then Kaworu smiles again and the moon returns to the starry night. “Well, if cambion exist, then why not nonbinaries?”

Shinji’s mouth falls open in a perfect _O_. Kaworu whispers something that sounds distinctly like _can I kiss you, Shinji-kun?_ and Shinji nods for fear of having misheard and then faer mouth slams against his and Shinji is crying again but his nails are wrinkling the back of Kaworu’s shirt (violet today) and when he pushes the palm of his left hand flat against the back of Kaworu’s head (faer hair soft and warm as dandelion fluff and Shinji just wants _more_ of it) Kaworu tilts faer chin downwards and faer tongue slides slick and hot into the back of Shinji’s throat—

And out of nowhere he recalls the sigil on his hourglass, the—

_God’s in His Heaven, and all’s right with the world._

 

When he comes to his groin throbs and his back is cradled by something silken. Shinji prays that he hasn’t fucked up again. But then comes the sensation of Kaworu (clothed, thankfully) stroking his hair and whispering to him if he’s okay.

He is, for now. In fact, it isn’t for another few few hours, as Shinji is fishing over the key to the house in his pants pocket with the sun cresting the top of the cul-de-sac that faer words smash him in the stomach and nearly knock him over into the pavement.

 _Cambion_.

 _Fae knows fae knows fae knows fae knows fae knows shit fuck he fucked up he fucked up he fucked up_.

Jamming the key into the door and shouldering it open, Shinji tags back over his actions.

Nothing.

His hand brushes over the phone in his pocket. At the top of his contacts list: _Asuka_.

“Make it quick. I’m busy.”

Shinji sits on his bed; the mattress creaks. “Asuka, could I ask you about our cambion powers?”

“Eh? Don’t tell me you’re so stupid that you _still_ haven’t found a mark?!”

He cringes, less at her and more at himself. “O-of course I have! But I wanted to know, do you _remember_ the sex? I mean, do your powers manifest somehow? Has anyone ever figured out that you’re a cambion?!”

“You’re even more of an idiot than I thought. Of course you remember the sex! What’d be the point of it all if you didn’t?!” Shinji catches something like a girl’s desperate moaning and what sounds like a cat’s mewl in the background, and Asuka swears under her breath. “Crap, one sec.”

“So _that’s_ what you were busy with.”

Panting. Moaning. A desperate clawing and rustling of blankets punctuated on occasion by a sound like a cat screaming (which would make Shinji concerned except that he’s mildly certain Asuka wouldn’t actually go far). At length he hears that telltale grunt of orgasm. The phone shifts around. “Yo, talk to me.”

“So you remember the sex, and you don’t magically, um, grow horns or tails or something? No red eyes? Nothing that could give you away?”

“Nope.” Asuka breathes hard into the phone and the static crashes against Shinji’s ears. “What, some little boy-toy or girlie-whirlie of yours figure out too soon? Must be brushed up in their religious folklore, eh?”

“Maybe.”

She clicks her tongue. “Listen, Shinji, if someone’s _actually_ found out about us, then you’re gonna have to tell someone. And they’ll probably tell ya to dump whoever’s figured it out in the river. So how much trouble has the resident idiot gotten himself into _this_ time?”

“I-I’m not sure yet! I don’t think fae knows, at least,” Shinji bursts out. He allows himself a hint of pride for automatically dropping in Kaworu’s pronouns. At least he has that. “I’ll find out, okay? And if fae does, _then_ I’ll tell you. I’m not stupid, Asuka!”

“Sure. Idiot Shinji.” In the background someone murmurs _Princess, I’m awaaake!_ With a huff half of annoyance and half of lust, Asuka mutters a quick farewell and the line goes dead.

Shinji stares at the phone long after the static lapses into silence. His gaze shifts slowly, deliberately, to the sands in his hourglass.

Enough. Enough still. And yet . . .

 

Shinji learns the little things of Kaworu’s world. Faer favourite colour is purple but faer second favourite is orange. Fae loves music in all of its forms and can listen to any genre, even down to those horrific banjo solos and electronic subwoofing whatever-the-hells that sometimes come on the radio; while Shinji tries to close his ears like the valve of a water pipe to the deluge Kaworu is always tip-tapping faer feet and nodding faer head and humming along when no tune exists to hum.

Fae plays the piano with a dexterous expertise that makes Shinji wonder just what else fae can do with those long fingers (there it is again, the Nobel Blushing Prize). When fae discovers Shinji’s talent with the cello (and really, _bless_ whatever poor confused music teacher thought to push a bow and instrument into Shinji’s hands years ago) fae insists they spend their evenings at the music store dueting away until the manager kicks them out. Then the manager actually takes listen and offers to pay them a small salary to draw customers instead.

“Hear that, Shinji-kun?” says Kaworu and every damn name his name comes out like a litany. “We’ll make such beautiful music together, ah.”

“Mm,” says Shinji, if only because he’s much too focused on the absolute beauty of Kaworu’s happiness. He wants to coil that happiness into his palm and hide it deep in his soul for the coldest of winter nights to bring it out again and watch it light up the darkness of his room with the shadows of a thousand galaxies on the walls.

Fae is nineteen and attends Mitakihara University and is majoring in psychology with a minor in music theory. Shinji isn’t yet certain what he plans to do, but Mitakihara has a robust program in most fields and isn’t that expensive. Besides, the thought of finagling himself into Kaworu’s classes sounds like a godsend.

He pads over to Kaworu’s house in the mornings for too many reasons to count: because he can’t stand the sight of the diminishing hourglass; because he lives to see Kaworu’s hair mussed and only starting to spike up at the corners; because making faer bento is the most precious experience imaginable for faer overtly excited and emoji-laden texts based around noon; because any excuse to avoid his father neither notices nor comments, or perhaps doesn’t have it in him to give a single fuck except about his marks; because Kaworu whispers _I love you_ and offers him a key to t he place and burns toast in an attempt to make Shinji breakfast but it doesn’t matter because it’s _Kaworu’s toast_ (he starts living over at Kaworu’s by the turn of the semester, coming over solely for his things and to ensure his father is still alive; his father inquires about his absence solely once, when he wonders about the recent proliferation of dust).

Sometime in the spring Asuka’s accepted into a university in the United States and suddenly Shinji understands that this tiny community that they’ve built up over the years, this tiny room just for him and the other cambion-incubi-succubi who understand, this tiny sense of self of going to school every morning and to Kaworu’s house every night is finally, _finally_ collapsing in under its own weight.

He dreams of eyes and teeth and rotted flesh. When he looks in the mirror it’s _his_ flesh, blackened and peeling at the edges and oozing with promises of immortality for the singular price of _sex, sex, sex_.

 

He starts to talk to Asuka more often, and to Asuka’s friends. Makinami and Horaki, her marks, and also Ayanami, the girl that Asuka can’t stand but whom she has been eyeing for a long time. When Shinji widens his friend circle (and now, of course, in his last year of high school, because Shinji has always done that: too little too late, like the bitter refrain of a broken SDAT looping over a single song over and over again) others come too, like Touji and like Kensuke and like the rest.

But Kaworu remains his secret even when the sands run low and his skin starts to flake at the corners of his nails and his mouth goes dry no matter how many times he swallows.

He faints once on the way to school, wakes up bruised on the sidewalk, shuts out the darkness in lowered eyelids. After a few moments he checks his things. Nothing stolen. Nothing broken. His phone nearly out of charge, the notifications light blinking rapidly.

Messages. From Kaworu. Fifty-seven texts and nineteen voicemails. This time fae doesn’t need to touch him to blur his vision in tears.

 

It’s a long time before the cambion comment resurfaces. Kaworu, in fact, brings it up: Shinji is lying down on faer thighs with his hands folded over his stomach while fae is turning the dial on the radio, apparently waiting for some silent signal from faer boyfriend, when abruptly fae pauses on a song in a language Shinji doesn’t recognise (definitely not Japanese, and also not English, unless the singers just so happen to be singing all the exact words he doesn’t know, which, to be fair to his low grade in the class, might hold true).

“ _Pero podría suceder; todo podría suceder._

_La historia se repite una y otra vez_

_Como un martillo en la pared._ ”

Shinji opens his eyes, looks up. Fae’s curled over him, that damned halfmoon smile (how in the hell hasn’t Japan made it illegal yet, weapon of mass destruction that it is) enticing him up when he knows he can’t. Still he angles his head back and fae leans down to kiss him, upside-down, catching Shinji’s lower lip for a gentle nip prior to licking down the inside of his mouth. With anyone else the action would have felt weird or perhaps sickening.

Yet somehow Kaworu makes it not simply okay, but also rather arousing.

“Shinj-kun.”

“Mm?”

“You’re dying.”

Shinji sits up so rapidly that his forehead smacks against faer chin and both reel for a moment (or at least he reels, whereas Kaworu—for all Shinji knows—might have taken it without even a wince. “Uh-h! I’m dying, huh?” _What would Asuka do?_ races through his mind and he tries to channel the sole other cambion he knows. “That’s ridiculous. Look, I’m perfectly alive!” Palm thumps against chest. “See?”

Kaworu keeps faer voice leashed but dammit he can _tell_ now. “Yes, but you’re almost nineteen.”

“So? S’not like _you_ spontaneously combusted when you turned nineteen. In fact I think that most of the world might be over nineteen right n—”

“You’re a cambion and you haven’t made love for a year, Shinji-kun.”

Shinji’s jaws click together so roughly that he can hear the _chink_ as they slam shut. “How did you—” He backpedals hastily. “I mean, where’d you get such an idea from, heh . . .”

For once Kaworu doesn’t share the amusement. Shinji’s small smirk drops off of the face of the world to splish into the void on the other side as fae shakes faer head and faer bangs shuffle lightly on faer brow. “Shinji-kun, the first time you popped in, I offered you sex. I knew what you were, Shinji-kun. But I understood that you didn’t want to hurt me.”

Shinji has the distinct sensation that he’s steadily choking on the musty breath trapped in his lungs. His ribs dig into the underside of his skin; his skull rattles like marbles in a china dish and the inside of his mind hurts as though something had crawled in there and withered and died.

He can’t do this. He can’t—he can’t _do_ this— _he can’t do this_ —

“I did my research, Shinji-kun. Most of it is folklore and myth, but—I think I understand.” Faer features contort in a swirl of emotions that Shinji can’t read prior to settling again into that level pleasantness (and would it kill faer to let him in on faer suffering?). “If you make love to me, then you’ll drain some of my life force, yes?” Fae speaks each sentence like the final syllable were the first of the next so that the sentences melt into one another, mix and medley, into a perpetual push and pull of lunar tides. “But you’re only part incubus. So you don’t need very much very often. We could use this in the meantime. Until we find a more permanent solution. Because I don’t want Shinji-kun to die, no matter how vain and selfish that makes me. Shinji-kun? Are you listening?”

Eyes and teeth and rotted flesh. Eyes and teeth and rotted flesh and that damn thing repeating over and over on the radio like an endless loop like sitting on a train but never getting off and watching the stops slip past one by one (the kind he could try to hold on to but it’s smoke between his fingers).

“Shinji-kun? _Shinji-kun!_ ”

He’s shaking and he can’t tell anymore if _he_ is taking or if _fae_ is shaking him or if the apocalypse has come at last and the seventeen (seventeen?) horsemen are toppling the lands in quakes and infernos and drowning floods but Kaworu _Kaworu_ his ark his ark his ark and if he clings to faer he’ll ride out the maelstrom and crawl onto land again and he and fae will repopulate the Earth or something or other not that any of his thoughts are making sense in their jumbled state of phone static and pulsing blood and if he could dig his claws into his chest and snap his ribs open and tear his heart from its nest of vipers its nest of arteries and crush his core between his palms and never ever ever be so selfish so as to fall in love with a _human being_ —

 

His eyes snap open and he shoots up straight to palm frantically at his naked chest. Kaworu’s scent calms him for a moment prior to his rapid search back and forth for the source. A weight on his shoulder. His neck twists in that direction.

Fae smiles. Halfmoon. Warm. Pleasant. Familiar.

When he smiles in turn his lips crack painfully but the agony of his existence brings a sigh of cool relief.

“Shinji-kun, unless you really think me that unattractive, I _do_ want to make love to you. I love you, after all.”

“Oh,” says Shinji.

Fae leans forward to slide faer lips along Shinji’s mouth; Shinji returns the kiss with a fierceness and a flame that he didn’t know he possessed. “So, this is just temporary, right?” His eyes are watering and he doesn’t care. “And we’ll only have sex when I absolutely need to, to avoid draining your life force too much.”

Kaworu tickles the hairs on the back of Shinji’s neck with the pad of faer forefinger. “Or if Shinji-kun _waaants_ to,” fae whispers playfully to Shinji’s reddened cheeks. “Or if _I_ want to.”

Shinji swallows, hard, and in spite of himself he flattens his hands against faer chest to push faer down into the pillows. Kaworu winks at him; his groin _throbs_ again and this time he knows for a fact that he won’t have to thrust that lust, dark and vibrant, down deep into his soul. This time he knows that he can unleash it—unsheathe it from its fiery chrysalis—in the full pounding, pulsating glory of his damn cambion pride. “We can discuss that later.”

Kaworu lifts faer hips just enough for a spark of contact-heat between them and Shinji nearly loses it then and there. “I agree. We can save _that_ form of intercourse for later, Shinji-kun.” Fae strokes along his lower jaw to draw him down for another kiss and he can’t help the shudder that passes over him as his fingers start to work at Kaworu’s buttons; fae makes a noise of amusement. “Two different methods of oral communication, hm?”

At some point Shinji stops listening to Kaworu’s words and starts listening instead to Kaworu’s _voice_ , a voice he wants to cloak himself with and drown in.

At some point he and fae become one until no one is sure where one ends and the other begins, until they melt into one another, mix and medley, into a perpetual push and pull of lunar tides (he imagines orange, later, and doesn’t know why).

“I really _was_ born to meet you,” fae murmurs in the velvety twilight that swaddles them in each other’s arms, and the words sound so familiar that Shinji feels his bones settle back into their strength, feels his skin smooth over his sewn-together sinew, feels the tears drying already and the golden afterglow whispering into his soul instead.

 

The day Ikari Shinji turns nineteen years old his enbyfriend awakens him with a giant birthday cake that tastes like a dusty plate that hasn’t been washed in years and an overstored store-bought cake mix that’s less like chocolate and more like hell incarnated and they laugh and toss the entire damn thing out the window and fae introduces him to their new pet cat (Shinji insists on naming her Mari and when Kaworu asks pleasantly about why he’s laughing, he makes a mental note to introduce Kaworu to his friends and slaps himself for not having done it already) and the leasing agreement that indicates one Ikari Shinji as an official resident of the place and Shinji grabs faer and tries to pick faer up to spin faer around in delight and they end up toppling over another with bodies that haven’t quite yet learned how to fit together but which have all the time in the world.

He moves the hourglass to the bedside drawer. Double-majors in astrophysics and astronomy.

(Triple-majors, actually. In Kaworu’s happiness, too.)


End file.
